In the retail industry, shelving is very important and essential for effective marketing. The shelving must be flexible and reusable in order to accommodate the changing trends in retailing practises.
One shelving system uses a wood panel, which has a routed T-shaped slot. Flattened S-shaped brackets may then be inserted into the slot for support thereof. Shelving and other display items are attached to the brackets and then applied to the wood panel in any desired arrangement. Since all of the slots and brackets are uniform, the possibilities in arrangements for shelving and displays are infinite.
An alternative to the wood panel is a sheet metal panel. Sheet metal panels are bent to form the T-shaped slots (see FIG. 1). The sheet metal panel has the advantage of being lighter than wood panels and thus easier to install and arrange. However for each T-shaped slot, four separate bending operations are required to form a single slot. More significantly is that the bending operation prohibits the middle bended section from extending substantially parallel to the front face. The middle bended portion is always at an angle to the front face. The result is that the flattened S-shaped brackets do not properly fit in the T-shaped slot as the bracket is unable to sit flush with the face of the slotted panel causing the bracket to be cantilevered which is undesirable.
One solution has been to decrease the depth of the T-shaped slot. However, this has the disadvantage of having less material at critical stress areas. With less material, the panel is less able to resist bending movements and thus more susceptible to being deformed rendering it unsightly for marketing purposes.
Another solution is to bend the flattened S-shaped brackets to complement the bended middle portion. However, since the angle at which the bended middle portion extends is not uniform, the brackets do not fit snugly in all cases.